See also: http://www.prlog.org/10082348-why-obama-needs-popemobile-due-to-us-history-of-violence-worldwide-failure-to-protect-its-leaders.html

For a long time, I have been strongly supporting  Barack Obama for President. Time will tell whether he agrees with a Cabinet slate to include William Blaine Richardson III as Secretary of State, California's Attorney General Jerry Brown as U.S. Attorney General, and Howard Dean as the Secretary of Health. Whoever Obama picks as Vice President is important in terms of winning the White House by piling up swing votes. It is also vital in terms of which powerful Democrat gets the job of being a "heartbeat away from the Presidency."

In very recent correspondence to Obama, I recommended to him that he needs to travel when ever possible in a Popemobile, given the volatile and incomprehensible hostily that exists in parts of the American public, the same folks who killed Martin Luther King, John Kennedy, and so on, particularly when it comes to race. This was even more clear upon reading Caroline Kennedy's New York Times Sunday Editorial page endorsement of Obama, and the endorsements which followed within the next two days by both Edward Kennedy and Jay Rockfeller, all three of whom I immensely respect.

After positing this point of view, I conducted and concluded some terrifying research into the history of all of this in the United States and throughout world history. This is something that should never be swept under the rug nor taken for granted, even though the Secret Service is doing a credible and effective job thus far to protect the USA's first African American Presidential nominee. I gratefully acknowledge my sources for their invaluable research, including Wikipedia and a Newsweek article by Daniel Stone on the Popemobile.

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As the 20th century world lurched into modern history, killing powerful people became more than a tool in power struggles between rulers themselves and was also used for political symbolism, as in propaganda of the deed. In Russia, four emperors were assassinated within less than 200 years: Ivan VI, Peter III, Paul I, and Alexander II. USA Presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John  Kennedy were all killed by assassins, while an astonishing number of other presidents survived attempts on their lives.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination by Serbian nationalist insurgents sparked World War I, while belligerents on both sides in World War II used operatives specifically trained for assassination.

Decoded transmissions allowed the U.S. to carry out a targeted attack, killing Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto while he was travelling by airplane. Adolf Hitler was almost killed by his own officers.

India's "Father of the Nation", Mohandas K. Gandhi, was shot to death on January 30, 1948 by Naturam Godse, for what Godse perceived as his betrayal of the Hindu cause in Gandhi's attempts to shape a lasting peace between Hindus and Muslims, and the world lost it conscience, in the words of USA's George Marshall.

During the Cold War, there were increased assassinations due to the ideological polarization between the "First and Second worlds," whose adherents were willing to both justify and finance such killings.

Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan was assassinated by Saad Akbar, a lone assassin in 1951. Conspiracy theorists believe his conflict with certain members of the Pakistani military or his suppression of Communists and antagonism, were reasons. During the Kennedy era (which ended in an assassination itself), Cuban President Fidel Castro escaped death on several occasions at the hands of the CIA. The KGB frequently used assassination to deal with defectors.

Morocco's King Hassan II survived assassination attempts. On August 16, 1972, during an attempted coup d'état, jets from the Royal Moroccan Air
Force fired upon the King's Boeing 727 while he was traveling back to Rabat, but failed to bring it down. General Mohamed Oufkir, Morocco's defense minister, was the man behind the coup and was officially declared to have committed suicide after the attack, although he sustained several bullet wounds. Others coup participants forced to jump out of a helicopter from a high altitude into the Atlantic Ocean.

Major powers repudiated Cold War assassinations, perhaps a political smokescreen; the covert and illegal training of assassins continues today, with Russia, Israel, and other nations accused of such operations. In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan, himself an assassination attempt survivor,  ordered the Operation El Dorado Canyon air raid on Libya. The primary targets was the home residence of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi; Gaddafi escaped unharmed, but his adopted daughter Hanna was one of the civilian casualties.

Benino Aquino's assassination in the Philippines ended the 20 years of autocratic rule of President Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino, former Senator and leading opposition figure, was assassinated in 1983 at the Manila International Airport upon returning from exile; his death pushed his
widow, Corazon Aquino, into the the presidency.

On August 17, 1988, President of Pakistan Gen. M. Zia ul Haq died along with his staff and the American Ambassador to Pakistan when his C-130 transport plane exploded after taking off from Bahawalpur because of a bomb. The CIA, KGB and Indian secret service RAW were all implicated, depending who was doing the implicating....

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